Moving

Today is October 8, and in exactly one month I will have worked a full week at my new job in Mississauga. I've landed a full-time CSR position with TD Canada Trust which is great, because I will be salaried and have guaranteed hours and do not include as many evenings.

It has been a couple months that I have been wanting to move home, but now that it's all happening, I am experiencing mixed feelings of both happiness and sadness. I am so happy, because I have completed my university education, and I'm going to move home! When I left to come to school in Waterloo when I was just 19, it was never with the intention that Kitchener/Waterloo would become my permanent residence, and so I am happy to go back to Brampton. My family is in Brampton, Daniel is in Brampton and a couple close friends are in Brampton and Toronto. I get to be close to my parents who I've missed so much and just "feel like I'm home." I haven't had that feeling any other time except for those when I've arrived back into my home in Brampton, and I'm so happy that on October 31st when I get that feeling, it won't be coupled with the sadness of knowing that I have to leave again too soon.

But the sadness... I'll be missing the independance I've learned since moving away in first year, and I'll miss the apartment that I've come to make my home. This has been the apartment that Sarah and I have lived in for over a year and a half, and in a way it has become my home which I will miss. Sarah has already moved to Niagara Falls which makes leaving this apartment sad, but also marking the end of a chapter in my life, although I'm finding it hard to articulate what that chapter is. I left home and went out on my own, and I choose to go back because right now that's where I feel like i belong.

This post is really just me getting my feelings out on "paper" so that I can work through these mixed emotions. I know that moving home is going to be a good thing for me to do, and I know that I will be happier living my house with my family and being closer to Daniel so that we don't have to do long distance anymore!

Cycling

Recently there has been a lot of media published surrounding the highly politicized mode of transportation: cycling. Especially since this week a bicycle courier was killed this week in Toronto, and the CEO of Invest Toronto has been charged, although it is not yet known how the cyclist was killed...hopefully we will find this out soon but as of yet we can only speculate. You can find the article here. On September 1st, cyclists protested and remembered him by screaming "murder" and blocking up traffic in the middle of rush hour, bringing traffic to a standstill.

Consequently, the Star has started publishing a series on cycling in the city with 5 parts each covering a different issue of cycling in each of the 5 parts. As someone who cycles to work every day, I am really glad to see that the issue of "drivers vs. cyclists" is finally getting some media attention. Last month, I posted a link on my facebook profile regarding a horrible incident in Ottawa where 5 professional cyclists were run over by someone in a minivan. At leat 2 of them ended up in critical condition, and all 5 were in designated cycle lanes with helmets on.

That was such a horrible thing for me to read, and I thought that it should really be getting major news coverage, but it did not. The article I've linked above was the longest most detailed account I could find, and yet I have had difficulty finding out if those cyclists survived or what has happened to the driver who has since been charged.

I have so often been intimidated by drivers in their cars who somehow have no patience for cyclists, nor can they understand that we have equal right to the road as they have. With roads becoming more and more congested and the cost of gas/maintaining a vehicle becoming prohibitivly expensive, bicycling is a practical cost efficient method of transportation. It keeps you in shape, gets you to your destination in a reasonable amount of time, and it's really quite pleasant to be out in the outdoors rather than idling in a car.

The blatant attempted murder of those 5 people in Ottawa and the death of the cycle courier really says to me that we need to be paying more attention to what is happening to cyclists on the road. Motorists need to be accountable- they don't check their blind spots, or they even try to run you off the road sometimes. It is so easy to get run over when you're cycling that sometimes when I hear a car coming up behind me I am praying inside that they'll just pass me and not hit me. As a cyclist it's all about defensive driving (as opposed to offensive) because you have assume that the motorists don't see you.

The thing about this whole issue that really gets to me is that other people can have so much rage towards people who are bicycling on the street that they can do such horrible things like run them over and kill them! Life is precious, and each person who is riding or driving has people they love and want to spend their time with each other, and if you kill someone you take that away from them forever. Death cannot be erased, cyclists should be able to ride on the road safely without fear of dying a senseless and painful death!

What needs to happen is that everyone needs to share the road, so there needs to be education involved in order to make this happen.

Articles in the Mean Street Series:

Bike Vs. Car Battle... I definitely didn't know that cyclists are entitled to take up a whole lane!

Sharing the Road

Making the City Safer

Responses to the series

What a Cycling City Looks like in Copenhagen- heaven...

It's late now, but I'll have to post some pictures of Copenhagen tomorrow if I have time!

Skillet Beef and Beer Stew

Feeling somewhat inspired after watching Julie and Julia the other day, our experience cooking beef stew tonight had me thinking about how i would love to blog about this experience. The reason being that I rarely ever cook beef and my knowledge of different cuts of meat and how they should be cooked is very limited. Cooking is a fun activity that my sister and I engage in together all the time, and learn how to make a new recipe almost every week, although we generally stick to basic meats like chicken... there i dark or there is white meat two options, limitless ways to cook the chicken and it will taste good.

But, with pork and beef, it's a whole seemingly limitless variety of different cuts, each needing to be cooked a particular way in order to be good. You cannot fry a roast and get nice tender pieces of meat, the roast has to be slow cooked or cooked with a lot of liquid. Needless to say, when Sarah began to read the recipe to me, it sounded delicious and I wanted to try it although we had no idea what the cut of beef should be. It called for "12oz beef round roast cut into cubes", which we wrote down word for word on our grocery list. What we ended up buying was "Outside round oven roast." Now, I'm not sure about exactly how many different beef cuts there are, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the use of the word "outside" is actually important and that it means it need to be cooked for really long time to be good. That's the reason why I'm even making note of the distinction between what the recipe asks for and what we bought!

Even just choosing our piece of meat was an adventure! We got to Sobey's and conveniently the cut of meet which we bought was on sale! That was a good start, but then we had to choose our piece and we were clueless again! I don't know what to look for when choosing a good cut of beef, but we ended up choosing the piece that had the least visible fat because we were going to trim it off anyways although I had the fear that maybe this will end actually having a negative effect on the moistness and tenderness of the beef after it had been cooked.

Anyways, we had our meat, and that's one thing done: we've chosen the right cut of meat and it was on sale, and we think we've picked a good piece.

So, we cut up the meat into cubes that are a "stew" size, and then we made the stew. The stew smelled really good as we were cooking it, but I thought that maybe the meat would not get to cook long enough to absorb a lot of flavor, and we were right. The meat turned out good, it was tender, but it was not as flavorful as I would have liked. This probably could have been achieved by tenderizing the beef first and then, if we had had more time, we could have cooked the stew for longer.

Sarah is set on getting a slow cooker now though which will be awesome because we can throw together slow cooker recipes in the morning and have nice tender beef dishes ready!

So.... how was our overall beef experience? Well, thankfully, we bought the right cut of beef which we cut up with no major events! Overall, I would have just wanted the beef to have had more flavor, but that can be attributed to the short cooking time, not spicy enough sauce and (maybe) that we didn't tenderize the beef first.

We'll try again, and I'll let you know how it goes!

i would add to this video with my own commentary, but RAN says it all for me... especially with my previous post on food shortages, and the riots that are happening because of it. We need to boycott fuel companies which are using Ethanol and taking food away from hungry people to power our cars. What we need is an electric car.

Take it away!

Ecoholic 2

one more thing about Ecoholic:

in discussion of the eco-friendly options for birth control, i was disappointed to see that the diaphragm was not mentioned.

The diaphragm is the ultimate eco-friendly birth control option... almost no waste

she spends significant time talking about the environmental impact of the hormone residue from hormonal birth control, and ignores the health implications the birth control has... she mentions the other poisions we find in our makeup, our skin cream, or bug spray, but does not discuss the health problems that can come from hormonal birth control...

Essentially, vasil lists off the problems with hormonal birth control but does not offer the diaphragm as an option... of course, there could be problems with the spermicidal jelly. I'm not too sure. However, the diaphragm itself is excellent with respect to waste.

Ecoholic

So, this week I started working at Starbucks! Which, can I mention, is just amazing because they are such an awesome company.

I had "coffee school" today, which was a workshop where we learned about the "Starbucks Experience" and we learned about everything that the company does with regards to Corporate Social Responsibility.

One of the most amazing things that I learned today about Starbucks was the relationship they have with the farmers who grow their coffee. Starbucks actually goes into countries frequently and works together with farmers to help them develop sustainable growing practices, helping the farmers learn how to grow the finest coffee beans, and then, because of the quality of the beans being produced, pays the farmers premium prices for their coffee beans.

What is most remarkable though, is the way which Starbucks will help out the farmers if there is a time of need. We watched a video today about a farm that was struck by a catastrophic natural disaster, and so, within 24 hours Starbucks has freed up one million dollars within the company in order to help the farmers rebuild. Just when they thought they had lost everything, Starbucks, came and went to the farms and helped the farmers get back on their feet.

I love starbucks mission statement, and I love starbucks. They want to be the largest purveyor of fine coffee, with unprecedented quality, and they are doing it without screwing anyone. They are doing it while ensuring that their partners are all valued, and that their farmers are not exploited.

Which brings me to the title of this post: Ecoholic.

Ecoholic is a book I bought recently, and so far I've really enjoyed it. Essentially, it's a consumer's manifesto, a good handbook for anyone who is looking to lessen their environmental impact, providing alternatives to modern products used daily which generally avoid the cancer-causing earth-destroying poisons and chemicals.

Now I say, so far I've enjoyed it, however, I feel that Adria Vasil has overlooked some key principles when discussing Starbucks.

On page 99: "NGOs have been pressuring major coffee companies to start selling fair-trade coffee for years now, saying the industry is making mountains off the backs of underpaid farm workers. Starbucks gave in (somewhat) and started selling fair trade coffee in 2002, and these beans now account for 1.6% of its sales (about 2.2 million kilograms). Starbucks also buys about 30% of its coffee direct from farmers, giving growers a bigger slice of the pie by cutting out the middleman. Fair- trade activists want to see that number cimb, and they also want to see the coffee shop start brewing pots of fair-trade java more than just once a month. FYI, three of the Starbucks I stopped in didn't even have fair trade beans on shelves."

I have problems with this statement for a number of reasons:

Starbucks did not give in to anything. The guiding principles of the mission statement, help Starbucks measure the appropriateness of their decisions, and selling fair trade and fairly traded coffee and refusing to be a part of exploitation is the core of the Starbucks culture. Many people seem to recognize Starbucks as another "greenwashed" corporation, however, the goal is to become the "premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles as we grow," and this includes treating each other with respect and dignity, as well as considering the environment and communities in decision-making

By extension this obviously includes the farmers, and as is illustrated in the Corporate Social Responsibility report, Starbucks takes their mission statement very seriously.

Vasil also fails to mention the ways in which Starbucks gives back to the communities, such as through the sale of Ethos water, in which 10cents from the sale of every bottle goes towards sustainable water programs around the world. Starbucks has set a goal of donating $10 million by 2010 toward helping children around the world get clean water and raise awareness of the world water crisis.

There's still more that Vasil conveniently ignored: Starbucks uses 20% renewable energy (although, why not bullfrog power??) and their cups are made from 10% (or something like that) of post-consumer material.

Of course, the best choice is to not consume coffee at all considering the fossil fuels etc, but Vasil definitely gives a biased and minimally researched account of the efforts that Starbucks makes. What Vasil should note, is that not only does Starbucks have such a wonderful mission statement, but, unlike many other companies, they are constantly revisiting the mission statement in order to ensure that in being a profitable company, they do not lose sight of the goals, ethics and responsibilities that they have set before them... The mission statement ensures that we don't lose sight of our resposibility as global citizens, while at the same time acknowledging that profitability is undeniably key to everyone's success.

Not to mention that Starbucks has an Environmental Mission Statement too which should have distinguished the company to Vasil as an obvious choice for the consumption of fine coffee which is fairly traded, if not all Fair Trade Certified... that would also be another middleman... woe is me

A quick look at a Starbucks Timeline will clearly show the company's swift expansion, along with their community contributions... i am quite dissapointed indeed.

I think I've found my calling!

This is a really old post that I found today (September 5, 2009) that I had never fully completed or published. I did go to conestoga college last year, although I do not have a job in human resources management, and I still want to be a doula. So, just over a year after I started this post, I've decided that I am going to do it, and I've begun working on Certification with DONA International! This post ends abrubtly, but I wrote it a year ago, so I won't edit it any. I will blog separately about my journey as a doula... you can find the link if you click on my profile. Or you can find it here.

Although, the sad part is that I don't think that I can answer my calling without a full-time job secured, which requires that I still finish one more year of school, doing my Human Resources degree at Conestoga College... although that is still up in the air right now... I'm considering dropping the program... because I really really want to be a doula! Ever since I've been doing research on childbirth, and what options exist for women, I've learned that becoming a doula is something that I can do, rather than become a midwife.

I've been doing research, but I'm not sure where is the best place to become a certified doula. There is DONA the international, which is the obvious choice, however, their training program is mostly done through correspondence, and as such, there is no help in really setting up your network, and gathering a client base.

Another option is this training that actually happens in Kitchener, which seems like it might be a nice idea! This woman is a certified doula trainer, trained through the Ontario Perinatal School and she offers a range of programs: birth doula training, childbirth educator, and postpartum doula. Eventually, if I got into this industry, I would like to obtain all three of these certifications and then begin my own private doula practice! I would love to have the letters CD after my name!

Well, I've really been thinking about it, and I am so much into this, that I really don't want to even go to Conestoga anymore! I really, really, really want to start taking this doula course! I think that it will be so much more fulfilling than human resourses... although it seems as though being doula, especially starting out, is something that I would do "on the side" rather than as my primary source of income. (which saddens me, because I would do it!)

State of California overturns ban on gay marriage :)

I know i'm a little late posting this, but either way, it's still cause for celebration. When I saw this video it almost made me cry! I'm so happy for Ellen!

"A Green Veneer on Business as Usual"

Remember this post??

Checking out my Youtube subscriptions I found this video, and I am eternally grateful.


Go RAN.

Peace, Love and Clean Air

Ok, I've done enough blogging for a while now...time for a nap :)

Transgender man gives birth

Someone please tell my why everyone is making such a big deal about this.

A woman undergoes a sex change, for whatever reason does not remove her uterus (can't afford to for example), wants a baby, gets pregnant with the uterus not removed, so, gives birth.

What is the big deal? We didn't create a uterus and ovaries or any of that... so would everyone stop treating this man like he is a circus freak? Why has this even become news worthy? that's what I'd like to know...